Since the time of Clovis I, the
Merovingian kings of France have
been the rightful heirs to the senior crown of Europe - that of the
Holy Roman Empire, although that right has not always been
recognized.

The title that Clovis and his descendants were
originally given by the Pope when the covenant between the Vatican
and the Merovingians first began in 496 A.D. was “New Constantine”,
giving him secular authority over the choicest bits of Christian
Europe, just like the authority which the namesake of the office,
Constantine, had once enjoyed.

But Constantine had been the
“thirteenth apostle”, and was responsible for the incorporation of
Christianity into the Roman institution. He was therefore also a
priest-king, holding spiritual dominion as well as secular dominion,
just as previous Roman emperors had done.

But when the later Merovingian kings
began to exhibit a desire to exercise their own spiritual authority,
which rested partially upon the foundation of their blood
relationship to Jesus Christ and King David (they were the
descendants of both), it sparked a chain of events that culminated
in the assassination of Dagobert II, the last effective Merovingian
king, and the loss of the title “New Constantine” for his
descendants.

However, the Merovingians appear to have taken their
right to the title, and their right to European hegemony, very
seriously, in a manner that seems to be rooted in something more
ancient than the time of Clovis. They believe, perhaps because of
their descent from Christ and King David, or perhaps because of
their descent from an even more illustrious ancestor, that they were
already entitled to rule over Europe long before it was sanctioned
by the Pope.

This “Divine Right” was recognized by their loyal
subjects as well, who regarded the Merovingians as semi-divine
priest-kings, and who formed a cult worshipping Dagobert II after
his death. With a following like that, the Merovingians were not
about to give up their rightful inheritance without a fight.

Less than 200 years later, a man named Charlemagne (Charles the
Great), who married a Merovingian princess, was made Holy Roman
Emperor, and given dominion over a land mass greater even than that
which the Merovingians had possessed. Thus began the majestic
Carolingian dynasty, consisting after Charlemagne of men with
partially Merovingian blood.

Charlemagne too was considered a
priest-king, and is probably the most famous and beloved figure in
French history.

For his scepter he carried with him
the Spear of
Destiny, that holy relic supposedly bloodied by the wound of
Christ,
which is said to confer upon its possessor transcendental power over
the entire Earth.

And while he may not have ruled over the entire
world in actuality, he did have dominion over its most significant
portion. For at that time Western Europe was without a doubt the
foremost bastion of culture, science, philosophy, and morality, a
light in the darkness, surrounded on all fronts by uncivilized
barbarian hordes.

The Carolingian dynasty ended in 918, but the Holy Roman Empire
continued to play a decisive role in the unfolding of its destiny.
It was during this time that the Empire began to turn its sights
towards the Holy Land. The first Crusade began in 1095, and the
entire enterprise was brought about because of the pressure that
certain Merovingian descendants placed upon the Pope and the
nobility of Europe.

This resulted in the capture of Jerusalem four
years later, and the creation of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem as
part of the Holy Roman Empire. The capture was lead by Godfroi de
Bouillon, a descendant of Dagobert II, and his brother,
Baldwin I,
was proclaimed King of Jerusalem. The Merovingian descendants appear
to have considered the Holy Land their rightful possession, once
again due to their direct descent from King David, and Jerusalem was
in a way their coronation stone, legitimizing their eventual return
to the rule of the Holy Roman Empire.

It was to this goal that they immediately dedicated themselves, and
with the help of Baldwin II (son of Baldwin I, who died shortly
after the capture of the Holy Land), a group of Knights was formed
supposedly to help keep the roads to Jerusalem safe for pilgrims.
Its core members were all from the Merovingian “Grail families”, and
they soon went about establishing their own sort of empire
throughout Europe - one based upon the power of money.

The Templars
were legally beholden to none but the Pope, and even that they took
lightly, so any land controlled by them was essentially an
independent principality.

They held possessions throughout the
continent, and controlled major industries, especially that of
banking. Soon, they had all the princes of Europe indebted to them.
It took the Pope and the King of France colluding against them to
get them disbanded, excommunicated, and in some cases burnt at the
stake before the Templar menace was finally subdued.

Meanwhile, Merovingian descendants were busy reclaiming the throne
of the Holy Roman Empire via another avenue. In 1273, Count Rudolf
of the Merovingian-entwined Habsburg dynasty (later
Habsburg-Lorraine) was elected Holy Roman Emperor, and the title
stayed within the family until the Empire itself collapsed in 1806.

Interestingly, the Empire was ended by Napoleon, himself husband of
a Merovingian princess who had consciously attempted to associate
himself with the Merovingian mystique by placing golden bees from
the tomb of Merovingian King Childeric III on his coronation robe.
It is also interesting to note that, although he was not of royal
blood himself, he was recognized as an emperor, and ruled over a
pan-European empire much like the one that he had just crushed. The
Habsburgs remained the emperors of Austria, and then Austro-Hungary,
until the revolution of 1919, making them the longest reigning
European dynasty in history. And their role in European politics
wasn’t over by a long shot.

It took only 67 years from the end of the Holy Roman Empire for the
Merovingian Grail families to begin jockeying once again for control
of Europe. The Knights Templar had been the brainchild of another
secret society which spawned them: the
Priory of Sion, an order
dedicated to nothing less than the restoration of the Merovingian
bloodline to the thrones of Europe.

And in 1873, they sponsored the
creation of another front organization -
the Hieron du Val d’Or,
whose name, as the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail notes, contains an
anagram of the place-name “Orval”, a location that seems to be
particularly important to the Merovingians and the Priory of Sion.
Notably, the word “Orval” contains the syllables which, in French,
mean “gold” and “valley.”

Thus “Val d’Or” means “Valley of Gold.” In
his 1979 book Le Tresor du Triangle d’Or (The Treasure of the Golden
Triangle), Jean-Luc Chaumeil states that the Hieron practiced a
version of Scottish Rite Freemasonry, and that the upper degrees of
this order constituted the lower degrees of the Priory of Sion
itself. Chaumeil described the group’s disposition as “Christian,
Hermetic, and aristocratic.”

They proclaimed themselves to be
Catholic, even though the
Church of Rome condemned them. Their
mystic teachings contained, according to Holy Blood, Holy Grail,

“a characteristic emphasis on sacred
geometry and various sacred sites... an insistence on a mystical
or Gnostic truth underlying mythological motifs”, and “a
preoccupation with the origins of men, races, languages, and
symbols... ”

The order was,

“simultaneously Christian and
‘trans-Christian.’ It stressed the importance of the Sacred
Heart... sought to recognize Christian and pagan mysteries...
[and]... Ascribed special significance to Druidic thought -
which it... regarded as partially Pythagorean.”

The Hieron du Val d’Or was also
unabashedly pro-monarchist, and sought a restoration of the Holy
Roman Empire. But this one would be built, unlike the previous one,
on an ultimately spiritual basis - a vision specifically echoed in
the Priory of Sion’s own literature.

The new empire would have been
a reflection of Heaven on Earth, that specifically Hermetic Arcadian
ideal. Jean-Luc Chaumeil described the Hieron’s agenda as:

“...a theocracy wherein nations
would be no more than provinces, their leaders but proconsuls in
the service of a world occult government consisting of an elite.
For Europe, this regime of the Great King implied a double
hegemony of the Papacy and the Empire, of the Vatican and of the
Habsburgs, who would have been the Vatican’s right arm.”

The authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail
were quick to point out that this envisioned scenario accords with
the Nostradamus prophecy about the “Great King” who would issue from
the House of Lorraine, since the Habsburgs were the House of
Lorraine.

At the same time, though, this vision accords with that
shared by numerous other cultures throughout the world and
throughout history who have embraced the myth of the King of the
World, a legendary quasi-divine global monarch who, it is said by
those who believe in him, currently lives in the center of the
Earth, psychically directing the affairs of mankind, and who will
incarnate in human form at the end of our current epoch so that he
can rule earth directly.

It further accords with the “King of the
blood of Sion” image discussed in the infamous
Protocols of Zion,
which, as Holy Blood, Holy Grail hypothesizes, may well have been
the minutes of a meeting of the Priory of Sion, as it describes a
plot by the descendants of King David to take over the world.

The events surrounding World War I toppled the Western monarchies,
and for the first half of this century Europe was in total chaos. It
seemed impossible for current events to be any more out of sync with
the goals of the Merovingian bloodline during that time. But the
chaos worked to their advantage, because it created the need for
order.

At the close of the First World War, people began to theorize
that a united Europe would make it impossible for member countries
to go to war with each other in the future. The pitch became even
more fevered during and after the Second World War, as people began
to realize the true danger of the U.S.S.R. and the need for a
united
European power bloc to balance the ratio of world power against the
Communists.

Also, even though most of Europe was
appreciative towards the United States for freeing them from Hitler,
they also knew that the United States now held more influence than
any one European power could hope to stand up to in the case of a
conflict. But a United Europe would, once again, create a balance,
and stand as a bulwark against both Communist imperialism and
bourgeoisie American culture-distortion. Not surprisingly, it was
the royal families of Europe, particularly the Grail families, who
campaigned for a united Europe, often working through the apparatus
of the Priory of Sion and other groups.

During World War II, the Priory was being led by the poet and artist
Jean Cocteau, who held the post of Grand Master from 1918 until
1963. However, there was another organization operating under the
umbrella of the Priory of Sion known as “Alpha Galates”, lead by
M.
Pierre Plantard, a direct descendant of Dagobert II, who would one
day become the Grand Master of the Priory of Sion itself.

Alpha Galates was largely concerned with politics, both of France and of
Europe in general. They also published a strange little magazine
called Vaincre (Victory). Pierre Plantard has claimed that
Vaincre
was a Resistance journal (although on the surface it does not appear
to be) and indeed, European unity was a popular tenet amongst the
Resistance.

Vaincre proclaimed the mission of Alpha Galates, which,
as described in The Messianic Legacy, by Michael Baigent,
Richard
Leigh and Henry Lincoln, included:

“1. The unity of France
within her geographic frontiers and the abolition of the line of
demarcation between German-occupied zones and those under Vichy
control

2. The mobilization of all French energy and resources
for the defense of the nation and, particularly, an appeal to
the young for obligatory service

3. The creation of a ’new western order’, a ‘young
European chivalry’ whose keynote was to be ‘Solidarity.’ Within
each European nation, this organization, known as ‘Solidarity’,
was to represent ‘the first stage of the United States of the
West’”

This idea of the “United States of the
West” is one of the predominant themes throughout Vaincre, and is
illustrated by a drawing that ran in the first issue.

This drawing
depicts a mounted knight riding down a road upon which is written
“The United States of the West”, situated in between areas labeled
“Brittany” and “Bavaria”, towards a rising sunset marked with the
sign of Aquarius and “1946”, indicating that the birth of the United
States of the West would be the dawn of a new age.

For Alpha Galates,
this was not merely a dream. It was a plan. Louis le Fur, a member
of Alpha Galates, later founded a group called “Energie” that
included Robert Schuman, another man who wished for a United States
of Europe, and who later became an instrumental figure in the
drafting of the plans for the European Economic Community.

As the French Foreign Minister, it was
his “Schuman Declaration”, made on May 9, 1950, that resulted in the
formation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), which
combined the coal and steel production of several European countries
under the same authority. This constituted the real beginning of the EU, and May 9 is now celebrated as “Schuman Day” in Europe.

But it was not only the men of Alpha Galates and the French
Resistance that were dreaming of a United Europe. The dream was
alive in Germany, not just with Hitler and his advocates (who
clearly wanted to “unite Europe” in a wholly different way) but with
the German Resistance as well.

The German Resistance was largely
centered around an aristocrat named Claus von Stauffenberg, a
nobleman and monarchist with a large and loyal following of acolytes
called “the Kreisau Circle.”

Stauffenberg was responsible for the
famous “Bomb Plot” - the attempt to assassinate Hitler on July 20,
1944, now celebrated as Europe’s Stauffenberg Day. Among his circle
were his cousins Count Helmut James von Moltke and Hans Adolf von
Moltke, the latter of whom was apparently a member of Alpha Galates.

In an article from Vaincre, in which it is announced that Pierre Plantard has been elected
Grand Master of Alpha Galates, Hans Adolf
von Moltke, who is described as “a great German, one of the Masters
in our Order”, is quoted as stating:

“I have the pleasure to say, before
my departure for Spain, that our Order has at last found a chief
worthy of it in the person of Pierre de France.

It is therefore with total confidence that I depart to perform
my mission; for while not deluding myself about the perils I run
in discharging my duty, I know that until my last breath my
watchword will consist of recognition of Alpha Galates and
fidelity to its chief.”

Von Moltke had been the German
ambassador to both Poland and Britain, and had just been appointed
Ambassador to Spain.

His cousin Helmut James von Moltke had been
attempting to circumvent Hitler by negotiating a peace deal with the
Allies himself through associates in Sweden, and it is likely that
Hans Adolf von Moltke was on a similar mission in Spain. Von Moltke
died in Spain later that year, and although the Allies won the war,
the peace that followed was not at all what the Kreisau Circle had
in mind. Had they been successful in negotiating their peace deal,
Europe may well have turned out much differently that it is today.

This link between the Kreisau Circle and Alpha Galates represents
the first definitive link between the French and German Resistance
movements yet known. The relationship between the two groups seems
not to have begun until 1942, the same year that Vaincre began
publishing. Like the members of Alpha Galates, the Kreisau Circle
became involved in the planning of the EEC through their associates
in the Swiss branch of the British Foreign Office, and through Allen
Dulles, then head of the Swiss station of the OSS, which later
became, with Dulles at the head, the CIA. As I shall discuss, the
Priory of Sion appears to have had a special relationship with the
CIA as well.

After the war, Pierre Plantard apparently gained high rank within
the Priory of Sion itself, and began editing its official journal,
C.I.R.C.U.I.T., which stood for “Chevalierie d’Institutions et
Regles Catholiques d’Union Independente et Traditionaliste”
(Chivalry of Catholic Rules and Institutions of the Independent and
Traditionalist Union).

It was very similar in style and content to
that of Vaincre.

But in regards to the politics of state, C.I.R.C.U.I.T. did not confine itself to mere statements of opinion.
They predicted what they believed would inevitably occur. They
argued for the abolition of the French system which carved the
country’s geography into departments.

They then laid out their own
blueprint for the restructuring of the French government - one which
would include nine sections: “

Council of the Provinces

Council of
State

Parliamentary Council

Taxes

Work and Production

Medical

National Education

Age of Majority

Housing and Schools

This
doesn’t seem terribly radical. But then, in another article by Plantard, he described plans for the restructuring of the entire
world, including:

“...the creation of a Confederation
of Lands [becoming] a Confederation of States: the United States
of Euro-Africa, which [represents] economically,

(1) an African and
European community of exchange based on a common market and

(2) the circulation of
wealth in order to serve the well-being of all, this being
the sole stable foundation on which peace can be
constructed.”

The formation of a United States of
Europe appears to have been one of the most consistently-stated
goals of the Priory of Sion and those associated with it during the
twentieth century.

“The Prieure de Sion [sought] a
United States of Europe partly as a bulwark against the Soviet imperium... a self-contained and neutral power bloc capable of
holding the balance of power between the Soviet Union and the
United States.”

The idea of a united Europe was also, as
I have mentioned, popular among the French Resistance. It was
espoused by people such as the national literary hero of the French,
André Malraux, who advocated a “European New Deal" allied against
the U.S.S.R.

Also in 1942, Winston Churchill was quoted as saying,

“I trust that the European family
may act united as one under a Council of Europe. I look forward
to a United States of Europe.”

Organizations such as
Pan Europa,
founded by Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, began to pop up in the
1940s. Pan Europa included Jean Cocteau’s friend and fellow poet
Paul Valery, and is currently directed by Otto von Hapsburg. They
employ a Celtic cross as their insignia.

Other groups that were interested in seeing European unity were the
Western intelligence agencies, especially British and American
intelligence, who sought to build a pro-European network amongst
militant Catholic and right-wing political groups. When the O.S.S.
(Office of Strategic Strategies), precursor of the CIA, was under
the control of William Donovan, they attempted to infiltrate
the
Vatican and put priests in top positions on their payroll.

They made
use of Father Felix Morlion, founder of Pro Deo (For God), a
European Catholic intelligence agency which the O.S.S. funded and
installed first in New York, then in the Vatican itself. They also
made use of the Society of Jesuits, which has been involved in
Catholic espionage for years.

In 1948, the same year that the Congress of Europe met at the Hague,
the O.S.S. became the Central Intelligence Agency. Immediately the
CIA began funding European political parties, particularly the
Christian Democrats, in an attempt to manipulate European
governments and pull them to the right.

The following year, the ACUE
(American Committee on a United Europe) was formed, and William
Donovan was made its chairman. Allen Dulles, former head of the O.S.S. in Switzerland, friend of the Von Moltke cousins and future
head of the CIA, was Vice-President.

The Director of the
Council on Foreign
Relations, and the future coordinator of the
Trilateral Commission,
George S. Franklin, was the Secretary. They even had another
CIA
employee, Thomas Braden, as their Executive Director. It was because
of these men that the decision was made for the US State Department
to fund the European movement. Following this, Joseph Retinger
proceeded to collaborate with
Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and
others to create the now infamous globalist think tank,
the Bilderberg Group.

Meanwhile, the CIA busied itself funding organizations and
newspapers all over Europe that were pro-Catholic and
anti-Communist.

A major recipient was Italy’s Christian Democrat
party, which had been started by the father of future Pope Paul VI, who was also on their payroll. He had been working as a spy and
liaison for the OSS, then later the CIA, since WWII. It has also
been said that Pope John Paul II has been receiving weekly
intelligence briefings from the CIA since 1978, although it is
unknown whether that continues to occur given the Pope’s current
state of deterioration.

It was during the 1960s that the CIA began distributing funds to its
favored groups through the Vatican’s own bank. This was done with
the help of a shadowy, pro-Catholic, anti-Communist Masonic order
known as “P2”, which allegedly had lodges not only in Italy, but
also France, Portugal, Switzerland, the United States, Nicaragua,
Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina, and Venezuela.

As author David Yallop
has written in his book In God’s Name:

“P2 [interlocked] with a number of
the military regimes of Latin America, and with a variety of
groups of neo-Fascists. It also [interlocked] very closely with
the CIA. It [reached] right into the heart of the Vatican. The
central common interest of all these elements [was] apparently a
hatred and fear of Communism.”

All of this came out in the Italian
press when a massive banking scandal broke involving the official
Vatican bank,
Banco Ambrosiano, and P2.

The main figures implicated
were P2 members Michael Sindona (a high ranking official in the bank
and P2’s financier) and the lodge’s Grand Master, Licio Gelli. He
was a man with far-right viewpoints who, after the scandal broke,
was found hanging from Blackfriar’s Bridge in London in 1982, in a
manner consistent with Masonic ritual.(1) It also lead to the murder
of an Italian investigator, Giorgio Ambrosoli, and later that of
Michael Sindona himself, who was the chief suspect in the other two
murders.

It is known that P2 is under the direction of an even more powerful
organization, which one former member, Mino Pecorelli, named as
being the CIA.(2) But there is another possibility as well.
Supposedly, “P2” stands for “Propaganda Due”, the meaning of which
is not elaborated on. However, it has also been suggested to me that
“P2” simply means “Priory 2”, and that it is a break-off group of
the Priory of Sion.

When the P2 scandal broke in 1981, and Licio Gelli’s property was
raided, they discovered links between P2 and other organizations
that were very high up within the Vatican. These included a
Vatican
intelligence agency called “Opus Dei”, which controls Vatican Radio,
and another group that actually claims descent from the Knights
Templar: the Sovereign and Military Order of the Temple of
Jerusalem.

This order, which dates back at least to 1804, claims to
have been created by the Templars’ last Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, who purportedly drew up a charter naming a successor prior to
his execution. They are a genuine continuation, they say, of the
original order, and they now dedicate themselves to “antiquarian
interests.” However, when the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail met
with one of their representatives in 1982, and then did some
research on their own, a much more complicated picture emerged.

The representative told the authors that the order had just
undergone a schism in which members of their group broke away to
form their own, now headquartered in Switzerland. From this another
group had spun off that made its headquarters in the Swiss city of Sion, lead by a man named
Anton Zapelli, which called itself “Grand Prieure de Suisse.”

This organization included a number of members
who also belonged to the Grand Suisse Loge Alpina, and Zapelli had
been named by one of the informants interviewed for Holy Blood, Holy
Grail as being, “the real power behind the Prieure de Sion.” In
their subsequent research, the authors came across internal
documents from the Grand Prieure de Suisse.

They dealt largely with
two themes:

international banking

European unification

specifically “the role of modern Templars in the reunification of
Europe”

Could it be that the “Gnomes of Zurich” and the powerful men and
women throughout Europe who have influenced the
formation of
the EU
were in fact “modern Templars” - members of chivalrous and
traditionalist secret societies dedicated to furthering the
political goals of the Grail families?

That certainly appears to be
the case. Pierre Plantard himself admitted as much in his last
interview with the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail (Michael
Baigent, Henry Lincoln, Richard Leigh - which he
conducted just after he had withdrawn himself from the Priory of Sion). In this meeting,
Plantard expanded upon the Priory of Sion’s
political goals for the immediate future.

“Mitterand... had been a necessary
stepping stone”, but, “had served his purpose, and was
expendable. The time had come to move on, and nothing could now
stop ‘it’ from doing so.”

He said that for some of the Priory’s
members, their ultimate aim was a United States of Europe, to
balance the power exercised by the Soviet Union and the United
States.

They also desired a larger “common market” of the Occident,
which would include both Europe and the United States. About the
involvement of the Vatican in this grand plan, Plantard said that
Rome was “cooperating” in accordance with their “ongoing policy” on
such matters, “to which individual popes were bound.”

Without
elaborating much on what this meant, he admitted that,

“Certain concessions had been
necessary in return, but they were essentially nominal.”

The Grail families then, according to
Plantard, ultimately control Europe, but do so almost with the
permission of the Vatican, the other great power that secretly
manipulates European politics.

It is a sort of symbiotic
relationship built not so much on mutual respect but on the
recognition on the part of each that neither party could hope to
hold power for very long without the acquiescence of the other. In
this way, the situation is much the same as it was during the days
of the Holy Roman Empire.

When the European Union officially began in 1950 as the European
Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), it was a purely economic
confederation built for the purpose of helping Europe recover from
the war and fend off the growing Communist threat. Today, the
European Union is a swiftly coalescing super-state, with a common
currency, central bank, parliament, judiciary, police force, and
international laws that in many cases overrule member states.

Plans
are in place to create a standing European army, navy and air force
meant to phase out European reliance on NATO and the UN.

Europe even has a common flag and a
transnational anthem - Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” The
EU consists of
fifteen member countries and is looking to acquire ten more on May
1, 2004 (the pagan holiday of Beltane). It will then contain more
than half a billion people. It definitely constitutes a power equal
in magnitude to the United States, and the Communist bloc, which it
was partially conceived for the purpose of combating, has been
destroyed. But the trend towards transnational super-states is
growing.

Otto von Habsburg stated in a recent interview that,

“NAFTA will also develop into such
an organization [like the EU.] Then we can gradually come to
what will be a global ... organization.”

There are those, such as J.R. Church
(host of the “Prophecy in the News” television program) and the late
Herbert W. Armstrong (of the Worldwide Church of God) who have seen
in the EU a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, the kingdom of the
Antichrist described in The Revelation of St. John the Divine.

In
this book, it describes,

“a woman clothed with the Sun, and
the Moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve
stars.”

(Revelation 12.)

When one reads this, it is impossible
not to think of the flag of the European Union, consisting of twelve
stars on a blue field, supposedly because “12 is the number of
perfection”, according to the EU’s official website. (This is the
same flag proposed in Vaincre for the United States of Europe.)

Furthermore, the description of the
woman in Revelation 12 accords precisely with that of the Babylonian
mother goddess, Ishtar, the “Queen of Heaven”, who also stands upon
the Moon, clothed with the Sun, and with a crown of twelve stars
around her head.

This image was later adapted by the Catholic Church
into their image of the Virgin Mary, also called by them the “Queen
of Heaven.”

Indeed, the Pope has officially declared the
Virgin Mary
to be the patron deity of the European Union. Also, the twenty pence
coin of the British colony Gibraltar once bore the image of the
Virgin Mary, crowned with the twelve stars and labeled both “Queen
of Heaven” and “Our Lady of Europa.”

Ishtar was the Babylonian love goddess,
worshipped as a divine whore with the sacred rite of temple
prostitution.

Can there be any doubt, then, that this is the same
goddess discussed later in The Revelation of St. John the Divine
when it talks about the Scarlet Woman,

“the great whore that sitteth upon
many waters... with whom the kings of the earth have committed
fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made
drunk with the wine of her fornication”?

St. John describes his vision thusly:

“...and I saw a woman sit upon a
scarlet-colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven
heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and
scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and
pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and
filthiness of her fornication. And upon her forehead was a name
written: MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND
ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. (Revelation 17:4-5.)”

The cup she is described as holding is
reminiscent of the Grail, symbolized as a holy vessel.

The Catholic
Church has personified this image of the scarlet woman in the form
of St. Mary Magdalene, the reformed whore of the New Testament who
became Christ’s closest disciple (and, according to apocryphal
literature, also his wife.) The Grail families worship Mary
Magdalene as a personification of the Venus/Ishtar love goddess
archetype, and she is often depicted holding a vase “full of healing
balm”, which is said by esotericists to symbolize the Grail.

Another notable feature of the Scarlet Woman is the Beast upon which
she rides. St. John the Divine states specifically that,

“The seven heads [of the Beast] are
the seven mountains on which the woman sitteth.”

(Revelation. 17:9.)

Rome was built upon seven hills, so this
statement may indicate the Catholic Church of Rome, a revised
version of the old Babylonian priesthood (with the old gods
disguised as Christ, Mary and the saints). In Revelation 17:12 it
says:

“the ten horns... are ten kings,
which have received no kingdom as yet, but receive power as
kings one hour with the Beast.”

Could these be the crown heads of
Europe, who will one day rule over ten forthcoming kingdoms in a
newly-revised Holy Roman Empire?

Herbert W. Armstrong certainly
thought so. He believed (in accordance with my own research) that
the royal houses of Europe were made up of the descendants of the
ten lost tribes of Israel, and that they were destined to establish
the kingdom of the Antichrist, exactly as these tribes had been
prophesized to do in the Bible.

The image of a woman riding a beast is in itself symbolic of
Europe.
An ancient Greek myth, discussed in detail in Dagobert’s Revenge
Volume 4#1, relates how the goddess Europa (after whom the continent
of Europe was named) was kidnapped and raped by the great Zeus in
the form of a bull. He came to her from out of the sea, and carried
her off beneath the waves.

This story has previously been identified
this story with the myth of the Quinotaur, or sea bull, whose rape
of a Visigothic princess lead to the birth of Meroveus, the founder
of the Merovingian dynasty. Of course, the Merovingians went on to
provide Europe with the royal families who ruled over the Holy Roman
Empire, now currently being resurrected in the form of the European
Union.

The image of Europa riding the bull is
used on numerous official EU documents, including currency, and can
be found depicted in motifs and statuary throughout the official EU
buildings in Brussels and Strasbourg. (3)

This has been interpreted
by a number of Bible prophecy preachers as a statement by the EU
identifying itself with the Beast of Revelation, yet many of these
people are ignorant of the Greek myth of Europa. It is clear,
however, that the man who called himself St. John the Divine most
certainly was not ignorant of the Greek myth. He saw that the Roman
Empire was destined to dominate the world, and he specifically chose
to depict it this way.

The Priory of Sion also appears to see in the
United States of
Europe an apocalyptic scenario, although they declare themselves to
be working for the establishment of Christ’s kingdom on Earth.

Priory of Sion member Paul le Coeur wrote in his book
The Age of
Aquarius(4):

“Let us try to understand what our
mission consists of. Let us try to fulfill it by preparing
knights of the Apocalypse whose head will be Christ when he
returns!”

A one-time spokesman for the Priory,
Jean-Luc Chaumeil, even wrote a book about the Priory called
Templars of the Apocalypse.

One can certainly see their point of
view. For one thing, the kings of a future European empire would be
blood descendants of Christ, David, and the patriarchs of the Bible,
quite fitting for the administrators of God’s kingdom. And if a
strong European empire actually managed to fend off the threats to
Western organization once and for all, it would indeed seem like
Heaven on Earth.

This may be the most convincing argument in favor of a strong
European Union: the need for Western civilization, exemplified by
Europe, to defend itself against its enemies, especially Islamic
fanatics, the same enemy the Holy Roman Empire faced during the time
of the Crusades. Today we face a threat that, if not met, could end
in the destruction of our culture and the ultimate extinction of our
people.

This can be done only by presenting a unified front. Only
through Europe’s union can a genuine state of peace and security, a
true “Pax Europa” be achieved in the West - a peace that will spread
throughout the entire world if maintained. In a globe such as ours
today, external threats to the Western order need to be met with
common immigration policies, travel restrictions, and defense
policies, as well as health and safety codes.

But even more so,
those who attempt to destroy our culture need to be met by a West
that is healthy, strong and proud; one which acknowledges its common
heritage and cherishes its traditions.

The threat that faces us is ultimately
spiritual in nature, and therefore our unity must be ultimately
spiritual - not merely materialistic and political, which is what
the EU appears at present to be. The journalist and philosopher
Julius Evola wrote of this concept that,

“... the principle of the Empire can
have ... dignity only by transcending the political sphere in
the strict sense, founding and legitimizing itself with an idea,
a tradition and a power that is spiritual.”

Writer Francis Parker Yockey expressed a
similar point of view when he wrote:

“the nature of the unity of
[Western] culture is purely spiritual in its origin. The
material unity that follows is the unfolding precedent of the
inner, spiritual unity.”

Even the Pope appeared to be making the
same argument during a recent speech he gave to the Italian
legislature when he said:

“[The] common European house [should
be built with] the cement of that extraordinary religious,
cultural and civic heritage that has made Europe great down the
centuries... It is necessary therefore to be on guard against a
vision of the continent which considers only its economic and
political aspects, or which critically engages in ways of life
based on a consumerism that is indifferent to the values of the
spirit. If one wants to give durable stability to Europe’s new
unity, it is necessary to ensure that it rests on those ethical
foundations which were once at its base... ”

It is clear that the heritage which the
pontiff is referring to here is that of the Holy Roman Empire, and
of the Catholicism that sustained it.

One thing that will be necessary in order for the European Union to
survive will be for European society as a whole to reject the
overwhelming degree of anti-Americanism that has long been
fashionable for them to embrace. The United States has been and will
continue to be Europe’s greatest ally, a friend in good times and in
bad, something they would not do well to reject.

As I explained
earlier on, the United States government was integral to the
formation (as well as the funding) of the European Economic
Community since the very beginning, and US Presidents have always
been outspoken in their support of a united Europe.

Furthermore,
there is obviously a common cultural bond between Europe and North
America that cannot be ignored, which is why the Priory of Sion has
at times advocated a “United States of the West”, rather than the
more restrictive “United States of Europe.”

This bond between Europe
and America will only become stronger as the common threat to our
civilization becomes more grave.

The other thing which European society must resist is its recurrent
tendency towards anti-Semitism, once again making a comeback, this
time amongst the political left, for whom it is fashionable now to
campaign against Israel and maintain belief in Zionist conspiracy
theories. Israel, and particularly its capitol of Jerusalem, has
been tied to Europe by a spiritual bond since the Crusades.

The
kings of Europe come from the bloodline of the Jewish kings, and
Judeo-Christianity is our predominant religion. There is no
straining the Judaism out of Europe without destroying its culture.
Furthermore, Jerusalem was once seen as the jewel of the European
empire, and there is evidence to indicate that it will be again one
day.

Writes Tim Cohen in The Anti-Christ and a Cup of Tea:

“In September, 1993, [Shimon] Peres
signed a secret deal with the Pope promising Vatican hegemony
over Jerusalem’s Old City by the year 2000.”

Peres’ friend Mark Halter, who was
apparently in charge of delivering the message to the Pope, was
quoted as saying that,

“The city will stay the capital of
Israel, but will be administered by the Vatican. The city will
have an Israeli mayor and a Palestinian mayor, both under orders
from the Holy See.”

A few yeas later, the Pope, barely able
to stand, made the difficult journey to Jerusalem to offer a formal
reconciliation with the Jewish nation, apologizing for the Vatican’s
seeming complicity with the Nazis during the Holocaust.

On March 11,
2001, Israeli President Moshe Katsav was quoted by the Bild
newspaper as saying that he was “firmly in favor of his country
joining the European Union.” France, Britain, and Germany have also
expressed their willingness to admit Israel into the EU. Perhaps Israel will be known again one day as the “Latin Kingdom of
Jerusalem.” Let us not forget that Otto von Habsburg still holds the
title “King of Jerusalem”, and that the title will revert to is son
Karl upon his death.(5)

The only thing that is missing in this vision is a new Clovis, a
new Dagobert, a new Charlemagne, what the Priory of Sion refers to as
the “Grand Monarch”, the new messianic figure who will be a rallying
point for the revival of the Empire. But the appearance of this
figurehead will probably not occur until Europe reverts back to its
royal tradition of monarchy. This will inevitably develop in a
situation in which a unified Europe decides to embrace its common
heritage, for it will soon find that without its royal tradition it
has no appreciable heritage.

A European leader from a royal house
with established branches all over Europe is the only sort that
would be accepted by people from all European countries. Every other
sort of leader would be considered a despot with no mandate to rule.
Furthermore, whenever a people embrace or re-embrace an established
tradition of monarchy, it always makes them stronger.

Julius Evola
wrote a great deal on this topic:

“...in the interpretation of the
genesis of historical nations, we shouldn’t forget what was
essentially due to dynasties representing a tradition, and to
the loyalty that was created around them...”

Of the sort of government that should
lead a united Europe, he continued:

“European unity would always be
precarious if it leaned on some external factor, like an
international parliament lacking a common higher authority...
Only elites of individual European nations could understand one
another and coordinate their work, overcoming every
particularism and spirit of division, asserting higher interests
and motives with their authority.

In other times, it was
royalty... who could make the great European policy; they
regarded each other almost as members of the same family (which,
in part, they were, due to dynastic intermarriages), even when
grave conflicts temporarily arose between their peoples.”

Finally, Evola made a suggestion for how
a European empire could be achieved:

“We could suggest the idea of an
order, whose members would act in the various nations, doing
what they can to promote an eventual European unity... A first
group should be composed of members of ancient European families
that are still ‘standing’, and who are valuable not only because
of the name they carry, but also because of who they are,
because of their personality.”

Evola could have hardly predicted any
closer what was soon to occur: the creation of a united Europe by
the very same royal bloodlines (the Habsburgs and other
Merovingian
descendants) who had once ruled over it before, and whose dynasties
had been crushed not a century earlier in some instances.

The goal
of those families - a United States of Europe - is almost fully
achieved. Even the title which they envisioned for this new empire
is soon to become a reality.

In November of 2002, the newspapers
reported that the Convention on the Future of Europe, lead by the
former President of France, Valery Giscard d’Estaing, has just
drafted a proposed constitution for Europe (where currently none
exists) in which the very first article declares the establishment
of a “United States of Europe.”

Within the next few years, we could be seeing the fulfillment of a
millennium’s worth of plotting and manipulation on the part of
Europe’s hidden hierarchy - the Merovingian master plan to rebuild
the Holy Roman Empire according to their own prerogatives. And you
can bet that this time they are not going to give up their empire so
easily.

They intend this empire to last for a thousand years.

Endnotes:

(1) When initiated, the
Masonic candidate takes an oath swearing his loyalty and secrecy
on penalty of ritualized murder such as this(2) Pecorelli was murdered after making this
acknowledgement(3) It is peculiar to think that the state of Europe uses
an official seal depicting a prelude to rape and bestiality(4) Published in 1949 and translated by Peter O’Reilly(5) The Habsburgs are also the current possessors of the
Spear of Destiny once held by Charlemagne